Dureza: GPH panel dealing with MILF will also deal with MNLF, etc.

DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 08 August) – The government panel that will discuss implementation of the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will also be the same panel that will discuss the completion of the implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) with the “Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza said.

Dureza told MindaNews that it will no longer be a “joint implementation” team but “simply GPH (Philippine government) panel” that will deal with the MILF panel.

He and MILF chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim agreed during the former’s visit to the MILF’s Camp Darapanan on July 21 that there will be no more negotiating panels because the peace process is now on its implementation phase.

Instead, there will be “implementing panels” of five members each. MindaNews that same day clarified with Dureza if these are separate implementation panels or joint. He said it would be the latter, hence the ten-member joint implementing team.

But the peace process is “evolving,” Dureza said.

In a text message to MindaNews over the weekend, he said, “please correct. Dili (not) joint implementation panel ha.”

He said there will be a GPH panel and that same panel is to “engage also MNLF, etc.”

The GPH and MILF panels will meet in Kuala Lumpur on August 13 and 14 to begin work on the implementation of the Bangsamoro peace roadmap, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza said.

Dureza told MindaNews that he will head the government delegation in the first formal meeting between the government and MILF under the Duterte administration.

The five-member GPH panel is chaired by Irene “Inday” Santiago of the Mindanao Commission on Women, Inc. and a consultant at the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP).

Santiago was a member of Dureza’s panel when he was the government’s chief negotiator from 2001 to 2003. Dureza’s counterpart then was Murad, who was then MILF Vice Chair for Military Affairs and chief of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces.

The members of the GPH panel are OPAPP Undersecretary Diosita “Jojo” Andot, who was initially named by Dureza as the lead person; OPAPP Undersecretary Nabil Tan, OPAPP Assistant Secretary Dickson Hermoso who had earlier worked as head of the secretariat of the GPH peace panel’s Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH) and the Peace Process Office of the Philippine Army; and Rolando Asuncion, who had earlier worked at OPAPP when Dureza first headed the office from 2005 to 2007.

The GPH and MILF signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) on March 27, 2014, after 17 years of peace negotiations.

Under the Aquino administration’s peace roadmap, the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) which was supposed to have paved the way for the creation of the Bangsamoro, a new autonomous political entity that would replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), was supposed to have been passed and ratified to allow for a transition period until the first set of officials of the Bangsamoro would have been elected on May 9, 2016.

Congress under the Aquino adminsitration, however, adjourned without passing the BBL.

President Rodrigo Duterte, the country’s 16th President and first Mindanawon to lead the nation, has repeatedly said during the election campaign and even as President, that the historical injustices against the Bangsamoro should be corrected.

Duterte on July 18 approved the peace roadmap presented by Dureza. Under this roadmap, work on the new proposed Bangsamoro law “will be done simultaneous with the moves to shift to a federal set-up, the latter expected to come later under the planned timeline.”

The 15-member, MILF-led Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), which will be reconstituted to allow for a more inclusive representation from among the seven nominees of the government, will be tasked to “draft anew a more inclusive proposed enabling law that will be filed with Congress” in lieu of the BBL that the previous Congress failed to pass. The BBL will also propose amendments to the Constitution.

The Joint Implementing Team which will meet in Kuala Lumpur will discuss the peace roadmap in accordance with the 2014 CAB and in convergence with the 1996 Final Peace Agreement with the Moro National Liberaiton Front, and with other sectors, for what would be a broader, more inclusive Bangsamoro Peace roadmap. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)